


Never Forget

by PerfectlyGenericItem



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-25 22:40:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14987138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PerfectlyGenericItem/pseuds/PerfectlyGenericItem
Summary: Lucretia didn't realise that Magnus was also inoculated.





	Never Forget

Magnus held the freshly carved duck to his chest as he left his room and began to walk down the halls of the Starblaster, looking for Lucretia. He passed each of their rooms - their doors adorned with personalised name plates. Magnus chuckled when he saw Barry and Lup’s doors - each of them had added their own names to each other’s door at some point. The laugh was bittersweet, though - it had been a few days since any of them had seen Lup.

He avoided the vines growing out from under Merle’s door carefully, not wanting to touch them in case they were weird sex plants or something. He reached Lucretia’s room and found it dark and empty, so he kept walking.

He walked past the kitchen/dining room, which was devoid of life. Past the observation deck, where he could hear Merle and Davenport talking about something. _It’s Cap’n’port’s birthday? I’ll have to remember to wish him a happy birthday, later,_ Magnus thought, knowing he’d probably forget to wish Davenport a happy birthday later. He passed the stairs up to the top deck, where he could hear Taako and Barry agonising over Lup’s disappearance. And then, to the storage room, which had been repurposed as the Voidfish’s chambers, although Lucretia had recently moved her desk in there. Magnus, not one for knocking - everyone had known each other for a hundred years, they had _no_ secrets - pushed the door open, still clutching the duck with one hand. The hundred-year-old hinges groaned - they were high quality, but hadn’t really been built for a time period like they’d seen.

Lucretia nearly fell off the stepstool she was standing on by the Voidfish’s tank as she turned a full 180 degrees to face Magnus, alarmed. Magnus, barely able to comprehend what he was seeing, saw pages, torn from whatever book they came from, words redacted with a long stripe of black ink, grasped in Fisher’s tentacles.

“Lucretia?” Magnus asked, blinking, hard. “What are you doing?”

Lucretia’s eyes brimmed with tears. “Magnus, I’m so sorry. I didn’t want you to see this.”

“What is Fisher eating?” Magnus demanded. “What are you removing? What are you _doing?_ ”

Lucretia surged forward to grab him by the forearms in an attempt to steady him. Except Magnus wasn’t swaying on his feet. He wasn’t slowly losing a hundred years of memories. He knew the woman who was grasping his arms - that was Lucretia! He knew that thing in the tank behind her - Fisher, the not-so-baby creature he’d called the Voidfish who followed him from the Legato Conservatory and had the power to erase memories.

Lucretia could see his confusion and remaining lucidity. “Wait…” She studied his face intently. “Wait, Magnus… You still remember Fisher?” The unspoken words hung from her voice. _And me?_

“…yeah.” Magnus’ eyes darted from Fisher to Lucretia’s panicked expression, hearth thudding in his chest. He asked again, tone insistent. “What are you doing, Lucretia?”

 

_Magnus watched as the tiny jellyfish-like creature hummed and cooed at him, leading him further into the cave. He followed, kind of dazed, kind of curious, kind of really excited over how_ cute _this baby thing was._

_The baby led him past a giant, swirling pool of strange, inky fluid. Floating past was a much larger jellyfish, which, upon seeing Magnus, buzzed menacingly. But the baby keened and did a little backflip in the air - Magnus almost cried out an “Aw!” but managed to restrain himself - and the lights inside the larger fish’s bell flickered and it continued its trajectory into the water. The baby hummed at Magnus again, not moving but gesturing with a tentacle to the water._

_Magnus was confused. He leant down to brush a hand across the water’s surface, eyeing the jellyfish. “You… want me to get in?”_

_The jellyfish floated down to the water and hovered near the top, submerging its tendrils but nothing else._

_And then the larger jellyfish reappeared from beneath the surface of the water, and sprayed him directly in the face with it. It was thick, kind of like GoGurt, and it smelled like a fish co-op (and didn’t taste much better). Magnus gasped when the spray stopped, now dripping with the stuff._

_The baby fish cried out with what Magnus took to be a giggle and spun about on top of the water gleefully, before floating up and beginning to move, continuing to lead Magnus to wherever it was going._

_“…Very funny,” Magnus grumbled, wiping excess goop from his eyes and following the fish once more._

 

Lucretia stepped back from him, dropping his arms. The duck almost fell to the ground, but Magnus kept his grip steady. “I… how are you not…”

“No.” Magnus sounded angrier now, closer to deducing what Lucretia was doing. “Answer me first.”

Lucretia was still crying, but she took a deep breath in before explaining. “I had to, Magnus! You were all beating yourself up so much over everything these artifacts have done, and I couldn’t bear it! And then Lup left, and Taako and Barry seemed so upset, and -”

There came a sound awfully like a fireball going off from above deck, and Magnus spun around. “What the fuck was that?” he asked, charging away from Lucretia and up the stairs. Lucretia looked back at Fisher, still consuming the journals, and hurried to follow.

Magnus saw as soon as he got on deck, two startling sights, and something missing. The first sight was Taako, on his hands and knees near the edge of the deck, shuddering with sobs. His eyes were wide, his pupils wildly contracting and dilating, and he was digging his nails in between two floor planks, knuckles white. The second was Taako’s KrebStar, still smoking from whatever spell he’d cast, thrown aside and dangerously close to the edge.

And Barry was missing.

“Taako!” Magnus cried, racing to his side and kneeling beside him, putting a steadying hand on his back. Now that he was closer, he could hear Taako muttering to himself.

“…and I shot him, and I don’t know who he was, but he asked me to shoot him, and I don’t know where I am, and I’m looking for someone, and he was looking for someone, and maybe we were looking for the same person…”

When Magnus laid a hand on Taako, he jerked, falling sideways, away from Magnus, and scrambled backwards, hands falling to his belt. “Who the fuck are you?” he shrieked, fumbling at his belt. “…Where the fuck is my wand? Where the fuck am I?”

“Taako…” Magnus tried to hold back his tears.

“Who the fuck are you?” Taako repeated. “What did you do with her?”

Magnus, who’d averted his eyes from the broken elf in front of him, snapped his head back to him. “Wait. Taako, who’s her?”

“I…” Taako brought a hand to his face, eyes lowering as he wiped away some of his tears. “Who’s who?”

Magnus’ heart twisted, and he turned back to Lucretia, eyes fiery. “You… made him forget Lup?”

Lucretia’s ashen face fell even further, and she said nothing.

Taako’s head began to twitch violently back and forth as his brain scrambled to deduce what was happening. He dragged his gaze over the ship, and over the two people in front of him - what had the guy just said? - and over the railing where he’d just watched that guy fall, after he’d _blasted_ him - why had he blasted him? - and over the sky - where was the ground, why was he in the sky, and what was that map on the table, and why did it make him feel so _sad_ , and where was _she,_ and who was _she_ and why did he feel like he was missing someone when it’s always been just him and why was his brain so fuzzy and why and why and why and

Taako passed out. His eyes rolled back in his head and it felt cruel to Magnus, watching one of his best friends struggle so badly to recall 100 years of memories, and knowing one of his other best friends had done this to him.

“Magnus, we need to get him off this ship,” Lucretia explained, breaking the thick silence, but not cutting the tension. “Him being up here… is a chain reaction of trying to remember things that he just - he just can’t, and his brain can’t handle that. We need to get all of them on the ground, and away from each other, and away from us -” Her voice broke on the us.

Magnus nodded, not talking, and stood from next to Taako. He picked his unconscious friend up off the deck, and nudged the KrebStar towards Lucretia with his foot. The kick was half-hearted. “He can’t have that on him,” he said in a distant and cold voice, which broke Lucretia’s heart. “He won’t know where he got it. You land the ship, I’ll go get Merle and Davenport.” He walked down the stairs, clutching Taako as tightly as he once held that duck for Lucretia.

As he left, Lucretia saw the duck, lying on the ground where Magnus had been. It was wearing a sweetly tailored red robe, clearly hand-stitched from felt and woollen yarn. And it had a splash of grey-white paint at the head.

Lucretia picked the duck made in her likeness up from the ground and wept.


End file.
